Trainee journalist at Cardiff JOMEC, English & German graduate from the University of Exeter, former editor of Exeposé student newspaper and winner of 'Best Interview' at the 2017 Student Publication Association national awards.

The state has worked hard at improving its image in recent years, he explained – with initiatives like “Glückswachstumsgebiet Schleswig-Holstein” (“Schleswig-Holstein: a region of increasing happiness”) aiming to draw attention to the state’s values.

“This result shows us that we’re on the right track,” Euler told The Local.

East-West divide gets smaller

As in previous years, the former East German regions – including Berlin – did significantly worse than the West, placing 15th-19th in the rankings.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern took last place, with an average score of 6.67, while Berlin and Brandenburg scored 6.89 and 6.76 respectively.

However, the happiness gap seems to be shrinking – and scores in the former Eastern states are now the closest they’ve been to the West since reunification in 1990.

On average, the East German regions scored just 0.15 points lower than western regions this year.

On a scale of 0 to 10, Germany’s overall happiness level is a 7.02 – up ever so slightly on last year’s score of 6.96.

But this increased happiness wasn’t enough to stop Germany dropping one place in the overall European table (with a slightly higher score of 7.3 because of a different survey method used in the Europe-wide poll).

The country came in at 10th this year, placed just behind Ireland in the list of 30 nations.

Denmark topped the tables, while the UK’s score saw it placed fourth. Meanwhile, Greece came bottom of the rankings for life satisfaction.

“Life satisfaction in Europe.” Image: Deutsche Post

Now in its fifth year, the Glücksatlas consolidates data from the annual Socio-Economic Panel – an annual government-funded survey of German adults, collecting data on occupation, employment, earnings, health and life satisfaction.

This year’s results also took into account a representative survey of over 5,000 over-16s conducted by the Allensbach Institute of Opinion Polls in summer 2015.